Dan, just a quick question, do you know why Ueshiba allowed ukemi and showed the principles of aikido via techniques without teaching aiki first??? Or did he??
Regards
Chris

Hi Chris
I don't think anyone knows. ... I'm past caring anymore.

As for Ukemi, principles of aikido techniques and so on:
What comes first? Not my job to guess what he did and why or decide for you or anyone else.
Me?
I say that while it is good to learn Ukemi, and fighting principles....it is best to learn IP/aiki, which for the most part negates techniques and the need for ukemi.

Why is it either/ or ?--- If you claim the mantle of Ueshiba's aiki and you cannot explain the need of ukemi in the training he himself demonstrated, you cannot negate the need for ukemi in training for aiki as he intended it to be used (which I grant may be distinct from the way others may use it). If you cannot explain the purpose of ukemi in Ueshiba's intended uses of aiki principles you cannot explain why it may be dispensed with.

Quote:

But I've stopped trying to convince people with words.

... and so, you cast aside a weapon and resource of enormous power... Jesus once stopped a mob stoning a woman by a few words scratched in the sand and a single question.

More prosaically, Hooker Sensei once taught a seminar. He is military man of sometimes less than gentle words. He demonstrated what he wanted practiced. Attempts were made to practice it and then he stopped and expressed his displeasure to the whole group in words something like the following:

"What the F^&% are you doing? I showed something to do. I asked you to do it. All I see are you doing whatever you feel like doing instead of what I showed you. Now, I am just wasting my time coming here and you are wasting your time being here because you just don't want to do what I showed you. If that's what you want, why don't you just tell me -- 'F^&% you, Hooker! Go home!"

"Now do it again!"

So, again everyone tried and this time worse and more f^$%ed up than the first time. and he stopped everyone again:

"What just happened? I'll tell you what happened. You let me get up here and take your center, everyone of you, with nothing more than some words. That was your mistake, and when someone does that to you -- you should have just said: "OK, Hooker, F^&% you, go home!" Many laughed, but the point was very serious.

Training is essential -- BUT -- we must indulge the power of words to both break and reassemble ideas AND to communicate them because words are the vehicle of thought. Ideas in words can build up or break men. If you have no words on a topic you can have no thoughts on that topic. And since teaching and learning by mere imitation seemingly got us to this juncture -- it will not very likely take us home.

If we are not thinking for ourselves -- working out explanations that both makes sense to us subjectively from our experience -- and working out ways to objectively describe and explain to other people in both words and deeds -- what is done and why we do it --